June 15, 2016

June 15, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my second response to the “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et. al. (1998). I like to use the fond that is  used by behaviorologists in their journal. They can if they want to read my blog and peer-review my writings, but if they choose not to that, it will not stop me from thinking about the science of human behavior. 

It has often been said or written “science moves forward not in a continuous advance, but rather in upheavals distinguished by ruptures in current scientific thought” (Tiles, 1984). This is because of how we talk. To the extent scientists engaged in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) they moved “forward in continuous advance” with “scientific thought”, but to the extent they engaged in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), they created and then had to deal with “upheavals” and “ruptures.” 

 “Breaks” which presumably “lead to novel approaches of science as a whole” are distinguished by temporary changes in the way we talk. Unknowingly, we changed from NVB to SVB when something was more accurately understood, which then led to a more advanced way of life. 

As we have come to prefer writing and reading about these advances more than speaking and listening, it has become less and less obvious to us that scientific progress has always depended on how we interact with our environment, on how we behave verbally as well as nonverbally. 

The SVB/NVB distinction focuses our attention on the nonverbal basis for our verbal learning.  When we read that “science is periodically punctuated by revolutions” (Kuhn, 1970), we ought to acknowledge that  people from time to time are incapable of talking with each other.